Fucking excellent.
Ex-Obama adviser charged with hate crime over food cart rant
Former US diplomat Stuart Seldowitz has been arrested and is facing multiple charges after a video of him harassing a halal cart vendor in New York went viral.
The NYPD has charged Seldowitz with second-degree aggravated harassment, hate crime/stalking, stalking to cause fear, and stalking at place of employment, Documented reported. In the video, Seldowitz, who previously served as deputy director of the US Department of State’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, is seen telling a man selling food: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough.”
- Al Jazeera
If it were the comments alone, he couldn’t have been arrested, but he literally harassed and stalked the guy.
General calls for ethnic violence and genocide cannot be criminalized in the US though, because of Brandenburg v Ohio in 1969; landmark decision where KKK leader Clarence Brandenburg called for genocide of black and Jewish people. Ohio criminally charged him, then came SCOTUS ruling “Brandenburg’s rights had been violated by Ohio’s statue” and “abstract advocacy of violence cannot be punished”. Before 1969 free speech actually wasn’t as absolute, but this has been the precedent ever since